I'll Try
by SkinXLess
Summary: A re-telling of the classic tale


Part One

**"'You see, Wendy, when the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.'" – **_**Peter Pan**_** Pg. 24 – J.M. Barrie - ****Charles Scribner's Sons – ****1911**

Do you believe in magic?

Wendy Darling hated her name. Wendy Darling hated her house. Wendy Darling hated her parents. At two months, three days, and 16 hours short of the age of fourteen Wendy Darling hated a lot of things.

Most of all, Wendy Darling hated the idea of growing up.

Wendy Darling wanted nothing more than to curl up under the down covers of her bed and listen to her mothers stories and never seen the age of anything over thirteen. Nothing scared Wendy Darling more than the future – the unknown.

Like most young girls, there was a lot expected of Wendy. For example, she was expected to take everything quietly and without question. She was expected to take care of her younger brothers without complaint. She was expected to be a perfect little girl with perfect hair and no original thought once so ever.

Wendy hated this almost as much as the idea of growing up. _Almost._

Grownups, Wendy thought, are boring people. She considered them the worst of the worst for grownups – in Wendy's mind – lacked imagination. She figured they lost it somewhere between the ages of fourteen and seventeen. She did not want to lose her child mentality; she did not want to lose her imagination.

In truth, Wendy Darling feared the real world.

On the particular morning our story began, Wendy was sitting on her bed in her night gown, legs crossed, sketching out a plan to avoid her birthday at all costs. She'd already decided that she would not have a cake and she would not have presents and she would not have anyone celebrate it, but even someone as young minded as Wendy knew that a birthday was more than cake and presents.

"..So," Wendy said in her heavy British accent as she scribbled her plan on the paper, "if I hide in Nana's dog house I might be able to escape the passage of time and skip my birthday entirely. But that's only _if _I stay out of sight. For anyone knows, the unseen do not exist." This happened to be one of Wendy's favorite rules and was the reason she often hid behind curtains or under her bed when her parents came looking for her to do something for them.

This idea, thought Wendy, is infallible.

"Wendy! Wendy! Wendy!" Her littlest brother Michael came bounding into the room, his teddy bear being dragged behind him. "Wendy, father says you must help me pick up my room!"

"And why," agitated, Wendy began, "can't you do it yourself, Michael?"

"Because Father said I didn't have too." He grinned a grin of a boy who had just discovered his first loose tooth. Which, admittedly, Michael had.

Even he's growing up, Wendy sadly thought.

Wendy sighed and then, shoving her un-birthday plans under her pillow, got up from the bed and lead Michael to the room he shared with their brother Jon. The nursery that Wendy had very recently been forced to vacate. Wendy missed this room very much.

Little boy's toys were strewn out all over the floor or the room; toy swords, stuffed animals, and other oddities as far as the eye could see. Jon sat at his bed reading from a large and worn book. He didn't even look up when they entered the room. "Kindly pick up fast." Was all he said.

Wendy began to pick up the toy swords and dragged them over the toy box their father had made for them long ago. The painting on it was so faded that Wendy could barely make out what it was anymore. But luckily she had memorized it back when the toy box had been new, it was beautiful mermaids sitting in a lagoon, combing their hair and frolicking in the waters. Their mother had painted it herself. Wendy still remembered the words her mother had said when she'd presented it to the children, _"It's something I saw long ago as a child. I barely remember it, but I know that I know it and that's all that matters."_

Truthfully, Wendy didn't really understand what her mother had meant. She didn't understand how you could know something but not remember it. It was one of the things she figured she was too young to know about but wasn't important enough to grow up to find out about. Love was another one of these things. Also mathematics.

"Hey Wendy?" Jon's voice broke her out of her memory.

"Yes Jon?" She asked, turning to face him. He had put his book down and was looking at his sister with wide eyes.

"Would you tell us a story?" He asked hopefully. "One to help us start the day? One about _you-know-who_?"

And Wendy _did_ know who. Jon was talking about the one story subject they weren't allowed to talk about. Their father had decided that the character was unsuitable for nursery room stories and was a horrible example for children and embodied all that no reasonable person would want to be. The Darling children (and their mother, for that matter) thought different. But, despite their mother being on their side, Peter Pan stories were banned.

Too bad too, since Wendy Darling fancied herself the Peter Pan expert.

But, it's not like being told not to ever stopped them from telling stories. But usually they were reserved for bedtime and not morning. But on that morning Wendy was feeling in need or her stories just as much as her little brother was, so she sighed and nodded in agreement.

"Yay!" Michael cheered, jumping up to sit at the foot of his bed. Wendy wondered over to sit at the head of it and Jon followed to sit next to Michael.

"Alright," Wendy began, "so our tale begins as Peter Pan and Hook are both after Hook's buried treasure and…" and Wendy became so engrossed in the tale as she continued to tell about Peter and Hook's fight for the stolen goods and the Lost Boys and Tinkerbell and all that good stuff that she (and her brothers) never noticed the shadow behind the curtains of the window- the kind of shadow that a flying boy carefully listening to stories about himself would make.


End file.
